


Collision of worlds

by gotzendammerung



Series: Diary of the Nameless. East. [1]
Category: Monster (Anime & Manga)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:20:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21924628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotzendammerung/pseuds/gotzendammerung
Summary: Johan decided he liked fascism, the glory and virtue, the pride and stoicism. The rotten mask to hide individual miseries, preying upon envy.A little bit less than he liked communism.
Series: Diary of the Nameless. East. [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1444714
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

Munich, March 1987

“Can I stay a little?”

The boy, whose attention had been focused on the photos, turned around, facing the couple with one of his innocent looks, hands behind his back. So straight, like a soldier in front of a commander.

His new neighbor showed no objections. It was an old man, after all, living alone.

A little hesitant though, the couple agreed, and the boy promised to be back home for dinner. As soon as they left his attention returned to his target. That room.

Like all the rest, alive or dead, anchored in a past long gone, of glorious days. A soul denying defeat. ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’, could be read in one of the photos.

_‘Workers of the world, unite!’_

A rare scene indeed. The ingenuous number of photographs displayed on the walls and furniture, from the times of the Second World War, grabbed anyone’s attention. Not many people dared to openly show its support to an ideology considered shameful, because that’s what the war did, after a great investment, define the victorious and the failures. The good and the bad. Nazism was the devil, although, not a single political system survived without victims, in great numbers. Jewish had been the scapegoats of Nazism, as other groups had been targeted by communism, the so-called liberal democracies of earlier times, empires. Was a European Jewish of the 20th century more important than an African in the colonies of the previous century, a Japanese citizen in Hiroshima during wartime? It was.

No, the victims of utopias weren’t important right now, as he had found an opportunity like never before. An option to face the enemy. Understand it, maybe destroy it.

_‘An end for the enemies of communism.’_

Or befriend it. He felt childish excitement.

“Hi, I’m Franz Heinau. Although this is not my real name.” A bout of honesty was a good start.

“My, my… Lothar Buchheim is indeed my real name. And then, what is yours, if I may ask…” like talking to a small kid.

A pause, intended for dramatic effects.

“I don’t know. I don’t remember anything from before I was adopted.” His voice was clear when he talked, a little louder than usual, helping the man to identify that he was moving around the room.

The couple had already filled that information, no need to explain further.

“You have so many pictures from the war… are you a sailor?”

“I am, indeed, up until the capitulation, when the Kriegsmarine was demobilized along with the rest.” Lost pride in his voice. His eyes reached a photo he couldn’t see, showing the Kiel dockyard, the note said. “I served in a type VIIC U-boat, the U-96, during the last patrols, until it was decommissioned on February 1945.”

“Can I seat?” he asked politely, as he reached the chair on the right for the old man.

_Sit there. An authoritarian voice, like many others, used to toys, soldiers, instead of children. He obeyed. Punishment awaited him._

“Of course, no need to ask. Can I offer you a piece of strawberry cake?”

He smiled, although unnecessary. Practice made the master and curving the corners of his mouth still required rational thinking. Not natural enough.

“Yes, please! I’m hungry.” Eyes back to the photo. The whole fleet was displayed in the submarine bridge, right before taking a mission. 14 brave patriotic men whose lives were meant for the fatherland. ‘Gott mit uns’, they prayed. The wolves were starving.

_It had been a while since he had stopped feeling hunger, pain or even fear. All his focus on keeping a straight position. He did nothing when two guards made him sit on the metallic chair in the middle of the room. Chains met his wounded wrists again, although unnecessary. All he could do was drag his body to a door he couldn’t open._

Then there was loneliness, and the darkness.

“You’ll be happy with the Heinau, they are good people. In no time you’ll get used to the new school and will have tons of friends.” The man struggled to find the desert in the small fridge.

He considered offering help, yet he refrained. A proud man like him wouldn’t take it so well.

“I’ll be always grateful that they’ve offered me their home.” No, no, too impersonal. He had to correct that mistake. “But… yes, I’m a little anxious, everything is so new and… I don’t want them to regret this decision.”

There was silence until they were both sitting with a delicious piece of cake in front of them. The pink surface had been adorned with little dots of cream that like snow. A bright red strawberry right in the middle of the piece. ‘So yummy’, Anna would say.

Black tea had been also served.

_Blood again, he could feel it. Threads of warm liquid sliding towards his fingers. His mind simply shutting down._

He hated sweets, any of them, profoundly. The memories of a sister who loved them entailed, of blackmail against starvation. Food was nothing more than fuel for the body and Johan treated it like that.

“Don’t mind me asking but… you aren’t Bavarian, are you?”

“No, I was raised in Berlin.” As Czechoslovakia represented the enemy.

“Ah, that makes sense. Berlin was a magnificent city, indeed, until the socialists had to steal it from us, like half of the country…” he grunted, deciding that wasn’t a rant of a thirteen-year-old boy.

He couldn’t recall specific memories to either agree nor deny it. For him, Berlin looked exactly the same as Düsseldorf, Heidelberg, Munich.

He took a piece of his cake, finding that sweet, fruity taste disgusting, nostalgic.

“This cake is delicious, thanks for inviting me.” A chirp in glee, most kids liked desserts and Franz was no exception. “Is it fun to be a soldier?”

During the next hours, the conversation flowed around the old man’s life, nostalgia, ships, politics, but the topic fell again and again on the war, whose defeat he blamed those who stayed home, like another Dolchstoßlegende. He talked about his childhood in a rural area near Cologne, his passion for an ocean he only knew from his uncle’s traveling overseas. The love of his life, the red-haired nurse Hannelore he had met while studying in the naval academy. Their wedding and the family he created before the war. The two children they had and how all three perished in the bombing of Kiel on 25th July 1943, leaving him completely alone, as he remained the rest of his life.

And the pain, the sadness, and the anger. The feeling of defeat, the worthlessness, the doubts. How that life he had built shattered as the war ended, finding no other further meaning.

The later recovery, as years passed by. His previous knowledge of French was amplified by English, turning that sailor into a translator for the Allies he despised so much, a trade-off between pride and survival that offered him a routine life. One that passed by, sometimes slower, sometimes faster, while his existence was anchored to that country no longer there. A Thousand-Year Reich collapsing in a decade.

It was his first interview with a soldier from the other side, but the feeling was the same. It didn’t matter how much was lost, how big the sacrifice, the life of a soldier was always a correct choice. ‘Für Vaterland und Ehre’.

_‘A key engine in the soviet machinery, the heroes of socialism. And you’ll all be part of them.’_

The promise of glory. The tales of heroism. A life worth living.

_‘You are a disappointment.’ The lights on, so bright, so suddenly. ‘We are trying to turn you, a filthy nameless attempt of a human into the socialist elite and this is the way you pay us back?’_

“Are you interested in enrolling one day?” An innocent question.

“I don’t know,” he already was. “Maybe, one day…” He finally stood. The plate was empty, the cup dry. “I have to go now, I promised mom. But…” the sweetest voice. “Can I come back tomorrow, after the classes? I would like to know more…”

“Of course.”


	2. Chapter 2

He considered himself a soldier rather than a child. His training, his education were such and also his life experiences. It was a feeling though, since the recall of real memories was difficult and in those successful moments, the results were vague disjointed ideas. The acid taste of homemade lemonade and rushed footsteps. A pink fabric of a dress, or a blouse. Darkness accompanied by a lullaby. Himself turned into an immense album of images, sounds and emotions with no further context nor attachment. He was a stranger in his own mind.

Emotions… were an odd topic. A part of him felt, with that vivid, overwhelming intensity. The other part was an external observer, wrapped in layers of logic and dull knowledge in psychology. The gap between those parts got wider and wider, like a monster being torn apart to form its children. A conscience sitting right next to his torturers, witnessing his own abuse.

Those were the few memories he conserved of whatever was done to him in that place. Him lying on a bed, chained, and half a dozen white-dressed people roaming around him like vultures, waiting for the different drugs to strike, the hallucinations to start, ones he experienced both as himself and a spectator.

Tired of the scenario, he simply decided to walk away, through the building, the streets of East Berlin, until all he could see were eternal layers of grass, adorned with flowers here and there little dots of color as the sweet smell filled the air.

And he was not alone in that little paradise, never was.

“Hi.” A little figure in the most beautiful dress, concentrated on the plants around her.

She never answered, not with words, but with a single flower. And her smile. ‘I’ll cover you with flowers’, she said once at his lying body, picking flowers and placing them around him. ‘That’s my only purpose!’

Now all he could do was stare at his own body lying on a bed, in a random house of a foreign country, watching time pass by instead of trying to sleep. He no longer had a place to escape and no one would ever offer him flowers.

“Est-ce que vous avez des frères et sœurs?”

He frowned, trying to identify both the language and the voice. His confusion was too obvious to hide.

There was a book wide open, a notebook. He was holding a pencil. He was sitting on a chair in front of a desk.

He didn’t remember at all how he had arrived there, but it wasn’t difficult to imagine. His new neighbor, Herr. Buchheim was there and they were in his apartment.

Two weeks before the old man had offered to help him with the English he learned at school, a language he had never seen before. Russian was the usual choice on the other side of the wall. A few days later French was included in the deal.

“Pourriez-vous répéter?” He managed to gather his thoughts. The man had been looking through the window. ‘I still can see some light’ had been his answer.

He turned around slowly, approaching the boy. Concern in his blind eyes.

“Are you ok, Franz?”

That was a stupid question. His wellness was unimportant and therefore the question ignored.

“Yes… well… I do.” He didn’t. “I have a twin sister. But we got separated as she was adopted before me.”

One couldn’t be siblings with someone who couldn’t remember that one. He understood that the meaning of being siblings, same with twins, was little more than a reference to similar genetics with a common source. They were siblings because their parents were the same, and that was all. They were twins because they had developed at the same time.

The woman, now she was little more than that, a feminine figure that represented the role of a mother for a while, had explained. Same with parents, each one representing half of their children’s genetic pool, from whom he received half of their own.

Family was a matter of genetics.

That was all.

He used to think different before his eyes were wide open by a reality he had lived through, but not quite attended. Now it was different, and it was he who opened eyes to others. Innocence was a curse.

She hadn’t been just a sister with similar DNA, she had been much, much more. The whole universe covered by grass and pretty flowers. An energetic, childish voice with the will of a princess, the bravery of a knight. Everything he had ever needed, wanted, desired. The world outside that place lacked interest and his attention was back to her, always.


End file.
